With season tickets at Goodison Park sold out three months ago hopes are high for the new season and the French international believes with three weeks of the transfer window left there are more signings in the pipeline

Morgan Schneiderlin is a graduate of the Ronald Koeman school of blunt talking. “You can buy as many players as you want,” he says of the unprecedented investment in Everton’s first team and the possibility of six new faces featuring against Stoke City on Saturday. “But if you don’t have a good performance, it’s for nothing.” Time, then, for the manager’s new-look team to start gelling.